The reason sports gambling is good for the soul is this: it reminds you that all of those great "hunches" that you have had -- you just knew that it was Boston's year, back in April '04, just like you just knew, way back in '93, that AOL stock would quadrizilliontuple over the next 5 or 6 years -- are, in fact, balanced out by a lot of really lousy ones that didn't pan out (but which don't stick in the mind nearly as well as the others do). I've been using an online sports gambling site -- come and get me, federales! -- for about 5 years, and I've had some fabulous hunches; I did know that Italy would win the last World Cup (when they were 12-1!!), and I did know that the Packers would make it to the NFC championship game (15-1). But over 5 years, I'm about $150 in the hole because of all the ones I've forgotten about. [Not that I'm not complaining -- I'm happy to pay $30 a year for the entertainment value alone].

I knew that the Portuguese, the Croatians, and the Dutch -- certainly the Dutch -- would make it through to the Euro 2008 semis, but of course none of them did. [Spain, another one of my pre-tournament favorites, is still in the hunt]. The Croatia-Turkey game was extraordinary and bizarre -- 0-0 after 90 minutes of regulation time and 29 minutes of the 30-minute "extra time," at which point the Croatians finally score; on the ensuing goal kick, with what is literally the last kick of the game, Turkey gets an equalizing goal; the Croatians, psychologically devastated, make a horrible hash of the penalty kick shootout, and Turkey goes through to the semis to meet Germany. It should make for a pretty interesting match-up; over 2 million people of Turkish descent live in Germany, and the two countries have about as complicated a relationship these days as two countries can have, and downtown Berlin, where several hundred thousand people will gather this evening (Berlin time) to watch the game on the big screen they're setting up, should be one of the more interesting places on the planet at that moment. It's just a game, right?

And Italy's loss to Spain exposed all of the contradictory qualities that seem to inhere in Italian soccer. It is a strange and inexplicable thing: the Italians -- the Italians! -- have always been known for a peculiar brand of plodding, defensive, unimaginative soccer. Italian soccer begins with impenetrable defense, and whatever it takes to make it impenetrable. For people who have so much style, who care so much about style, and who adore stylish and beautiful soccer -- there's a statue of Diego Maradona, for goodness sake, outside the stadium in Naples -- they can't seem to find a way to play with the kind of style and grace that seems to come so easily to them in other fields of endeavor. If they can find a magician -- Roberto Baggio in the '90s, Francesco Totti more recently -- who can conjure up some goals, great; if not, they'll hunker down and hope they can sneak out some 1-0 wins. It's not that it's a bad strategy; they've won 4 World Cups, and are perennial contenders at international tournaments. It just seems so un-Italian. This year's team was, by a considerable margin, the most boring team in the tournament, and though I adore all things Italian, I have to admit I was not at all sorry to see them go.

The Italy-Spain game did have, though, a really memorable image, one that captured, for me, something about why these international soccer tournaments are so wonderful and so important. For a few seconds on the ESPN broadcast, while the Italian national anthem was being played and sung -- Italians are among the great national-anthem-singers in the world; they sing at full voice, and at 40 or 50 thousand strong can make an incredible sound -- they showed a guy in the Italian section, all decked out in Italian blue (azzurro), tears in his eyes, singing along while alternating between pressing his hands over his heart and blowing kisses to the team on the field. Do us proud, ragazzi!!